India’s Economic Growth and the Power of Compounding

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On August 2, 2016, I had talked about a bungalow on the posh Nepean Sea Road in Mumbai, being up for sale.

The bungalow was last sold in 1917, at a price of over Rs 1 lakh.  Further, similar properties in the vicinity in the recent past had been sold for Rs 400 crore, or so, The Times of India reported.

Essentially, something that was bought for around Rs 1 lakh, 99 years back, is now expected to be sold for around Rs 400 crore.

This works out to a return of 11.3 per cent per year.

How how much would have the bungalow been worth now in 2016, if the rate of return had been just 30 basis points lower, at 11 per cent per year? One basis point is one hundredth of a percentage.

Would like to take a guess, dear reader?

Rs 395 crore? Or Rs 375 crore? Or even lower than that?

In fact, the answer will surprise you.

At a return of 11 per cent per year, the bungalow would have been worth around Rs 306.9 crore, or almost Rs 93.1 crore lower.

This would mean that the bungalow would be worth 23.3 per cent lower in comparison to Rs 400 crore.

And how much would the bungalow be worth at a return of 10.5 per cent per year? Would you like to take a guess?

Actually let me not prolong the agony. At 10.5 per cent per year, the bungalow would have been worth around Rs 196.3 crore. This is less than half of Rs 400 crore. Hence, a fall in return of 80 basis points per year, wipes off the value by more than half, over a 99-year period.

And how much would the bungalow be worth at 10 per cent per year? Rs 125.3 crore. This is around 68.7 per cent lower than Rs 400 crore.

So what is the point I am trying to make here? This is what the power of compounding can do. Even a small difference in return over a long period of time can make a huge difference to the amount of corpus you end up accumulating.

Of course, a normal person who is trying to accumulate wealth does not invest over a 100-year time frame. And further, even if he or she did, there is no way of knowing in advance what strategy would work best, over such a longish period of time.

Nevertheless, this piece is not about which is the best investment strategy in the long run. It is about the fact that what applies to investment returns also applies to the economic growth rate. Even a small difference in the annual economic growth rate over a longish period of time, can have a huge impact on how a country eventually turns out to be.

As Vijay Joshi writes in India’s Long Road—The Search for Prosperity: “The ‘power of compound interest’ over long periods is such that even a small change in the growth rate of per capita income makes a big difference to eventual income per head.”

And how do things look for India? Where would it end by 2040 at different rates of economic growth? As Joshi writes: “At a growth rate of 3 per cent a year, income per head would double, and reach about the same level as China’s per capita income today. At a growth rate of 6 per cent a year, income per head would quadruple to a level around that enjoyed by Chile, Malaysia and Poland today. If income per head grew at 9 per cent a year, it would increase nearly eight-fold, and India would have a per capita income comparable to an average high-income country of today.”

The question is what will make India a prosperous country. How do we define prosperity? As Joshi writes: “At a first pass, it could be defined as the level of per capita income enjoyed by the lower rung of high-income countries today, with the rider that national income should be widely shared and even the poorest people should have decent standards of living. To reach the said goal, India would require high-quality per-capita growth of income of around 7 per cent a year for a period of twenty-four years, from 2016.”

 The trouble is that there is almost no track record of any country (except China) growing at a rapid rate of 7 per cent per year, for a very long period of time, which is what India needs to achieve if it has to be prosperous.

When it comes to superfast growth China grew by 8.1 per cent per year between 1977 and 2010. Only two other countries came anywhere near. As Lant Pritchett and Lawrence H. Summers write in a research paper titled Asiaphoria Meets Regression to the Mean: “There are essentially only two countries with episodes even close to China’s current duration. Taiwan had a growth episode from 1962 to 1994 of 6.8 per cent (decelerating to growth of 3.5 percent from 1994 to 2010). Korea had an episode from 1962 to 1982 followed by another acceleration in 1982 until 1991 when growth decelerated to 4.48 percent—a total of 29 years of super-rapid growth (>6 per cent)—followed by still rapid (>4 per cent) growth. So, China’s experience from 1977 to 2010 already holds the distinction of being the only instance, quite possibly in the history of mankind, but certainly in the data, with a sustained episode of super-rapid (> 6 per cent per annum) growth for more than 32 years.

Hence, the odds are stacked against India. And it will mean the governments doing many things right in the years to come, if the country has to get anywhere near a sustained growth rate of 7 per cent or more, for a longish period of time.

The trouble though is that most policymakers seem to take a growth rate of 7 to 8 per cent as a given, in their calculations, even though history shows otherwise.

The column originally appeared in Vivek Kaul’s Diary on August 18, 2016

All You Wanted to Know About Restriction on EPF Withdrawal

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This is one of the changes that I should have written about at least five-six weeks back, but somehow I did not. Nevertheless, given the long term impact of this change, it’s still not very late to discuss it.

From February 10, 2016, onwards, the government has restricted the total amount of money that any contributor to the Employees’ Provident Fund can withdraw. As the government notification points out: “The Central Board, or where so authorised by the Central Board, the Commissioner, or any officer subordinate to him, may on an application made by a member in such form as may be specified, authorise payment to him from his provident fund account not exceeding his own total contribution including interest thereon up to the date the payment has been authorised on ceasing to be an employee in any establishment to which the Act applies.”

The notification further points out: “The member making an application for withdrawal under sub- paragraph (1) shall not be employed in any factory or other establishment, to which the Act applies, for a continuous period of not less than two months immediately preceding the date on which such application is made.

So what does it mean? It basically means that anyone who has been unemployed for two months or more can now withdraw only his own contribution into the Employees’ Provident Fund and the interest that has accumulated on it.

The employer’s contribution and the interest that has accumulated on it thereon, can only be withdrawn at retirement i.e. at the age of 58. The age of retirement has also been increased from 55 to 58.

This change does not apply to “female members resigning from the services of the establishment for the purpose of getting married or on account of pregnancy or child birth.”

Earlier the entire corpus that had been accumulated under the EPF could be withdrawn. And if the corpus had accumulated for five years or more, it was even tax-free.

This was a loophole used by many individuals to withdraw their entire accumulated EPF corpus at the point they changed their jobs. All it needed was a declaration that they were unemployed. The Employees’ Provident Find Organisation(EPFO) had no way of verifying this.

Of course, the move by the government to clamp down on total withdrawal of EPF, comes on account of individuals withdrawing their entire EPF corpus when they changed their jobs. This withdrawal led to people not building a good retirement corpus. If viewed from this angle, this is a good move.

It will help individuals build a good retirement corpus. Also, with only partial withdrawal allowed, it will encourage individuals to transfer their EPF accounts when they change jobs, instead of simply declaring that they are unemployed and withdrawing their contribution to the corpus.

Anyone who understands the power of compounding will know that this is a good move, given that as the corpus grows the compounding has a greater impact. An interest of 8% on Rs 1 lakh amounts to Rs 8,000. But the same interest on Rs 5 lakh amounts to Rs 40,000. A bigger corpus in case of EPF is only possible when employees transfer their EPF accounts when they move jobs.

Also, what happens to people who are actually unemployed and can only withdraw the employer’s contribution to the EPF and the interest accumulated on it, only after the age of 58?

In fact, as I write this, the EPFO has made a decision to give interest on inoperative EPF accounts. These are essentially accounts in which no contribution has been made by the employee or the employer for a period of 36 months. Hence, what this means is that an individual who is facing long-term unemployment and cannot withdraw a part of his EPF corpus, will continue to earn interest on the corpus that he cannot withdraw.

This was not possible earlier. This change had to be made given that if the government does not allow people to withdraw their entire EPF corpus, it should at least be paying interest on the part of the corpus that cannot be withdrawn.

But all this is just one side of the coin. What happens in case of individuals who actually lose their jobs and face long-term unemployment? In this day and age this is possible. Even though they have money in the form of the employer’s contribution to the EPF, and the interest earned on it, they cannot withdraw it.

This may force them to borrow money from money lenders. Hence, it is not fair on them. The trouble is that the EPFO up until now has had no way of verifying if the individual withdrawing the corpus is actually unemployed or is simply changing jobs. This is a weakness at the level of the EPFO.

Given the information technology infrastructure available these days, it shouldn’t be so difficult to figure out whether the individual is actually unemployed or is simply moving jobs. Let’s say the individual withdraws the entire corpus accumulated under EPF and then takes on another job, his permanent account number(PAN) continues to remain the same. So how difficult is it for the EPFO to figure out whether the person has actually changed jobs? Not very.

Other than people facing long-term unemployment, these days some individuals also like to take a break and go back to studying, in order to improve their job prospects. The money that they have accumulated under EPF can help in paying the part of the fee. People going back to studying at the age of 25-30 are really not thinking about retirement, they are thinking about improving their job prospects by studying more. And if they study more, their job prospects are likely to be better in the years to come.

The EPFO needs to be flexible on this front. A better information technology infrastructure can clearly help.

Also, I think we are reaching a stage, where people who are in a position to manage their money, need not depend on EPF. They need to negotiate with their organisations to have a minimal contribution made to their EPF and the remaining money be paid out to them as a part of their normal salaries, which they can then invest in order to save tax as well as accumulate a corpus. It will also ensure that a portion of their corpus is not stuck with the EPFO until the age of 58. Organisations which are looking to retain talent also need to be flexible on this front.

But given how HR departments in organisations work, I clearly don’t see this happening.

The column originally appeared on Vivek Kaul’s Diary on March 31, 2016.